Recent Comments

About

Owner of PageF30.com.
Translator of Demian by Hermann Hesse into English - an interlinear translation for German students and those who want to see the original text.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/mithradates
Fluent in Japanese, Korean. Proficient in Mandarin, Turkish, German, French, Portuguese, others.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Here's an interesting page worth bookmarking for those interested in linguistic trends, which contains two particularly interesting charts: the population of those speaking French as a mother tongue outside of Quebec over years, and inversely the population of those speaking English as a mother tongue inside Quebec. The numbers are recorded every decade so we're due to have a new set of numbers relatively soon after the next census. First the French mother tongue population:

1951 - 7.3%, 700,000 people total
1961 - 6.6%, 870,000 people total
1971 - 6.0%, 890,000 people total
1981 - 5.2%, 900,000 people total
1991 - 4.8%, 970,000 people total
2001 - 4.4%, 970,000 people total

You can see that looking at the numbers in two different ways can make it look like the French population outside Quebec is either shrinking or remains strong.

As for the English mother tongue population in Quebec:

It showed a continual increase (in total population, not ratio to the general population) until after 1971 when it dropped like a stone.

1951 - 13.8%, 560,000 people total
1961 - 13.3%, 700,000 people total
1971 - 13.1%, 800,000 people total
1981 - 10.9%, 690,000 people total
1991 - 9.2%, 640,000 people total
2001 - 8.3%, 590,000 people total

Another interesting page here gives the most bilingual (E/F bilingual, that is) cities in the country:

Montreal - 52%

Moncton - 46.9%

Ottawa-Gatineau - 44.4%

Halifax - 12.1%

Winnipeg - 10.9%

Toronto - 8.3%

Vancouver - 7.8%

Edmonton - 7.6%

It also notes that Montreal is the city in North America with the largest proportion of people that speak at least three languages.